Abraham Lincoln, a History — Volume 02 eBook

As to the alleged destruction of equality, the North
proposed to deny to the slave-States no single right
claimed by the free-States. The talk about “provinces
of a consolidated despotism to be governed by a fixed
majority” was, in itself an absurd contradiction
in terms, which repudiated the fundamental idea of
republican government. The acknowledgment that
any danger from anti-slavery “measures”
was only in the future, negatived its validity as
a present grievance. Hostility to “our
institutions” was expressly disavowed by full
constitutional recognition of slavery under State authority.
The charge of “sectionalism” came with
a bad grace from a State whose newspapers boasted
that none but the Breckinridge ticket was tolerated
within her borders, and whose elsewhere obsolete “institution”
of choosing Presidential electors by the Legislature
instead of by the people, combined with such a dwarfed
and crippled public sentiment, made it practically
impossible for a single vote to be cast for either
Lincoln or Douglas or Bell—­a condition mathematically
four times as “sectional” as that of any
State of the North.

Finally, the avowed determination to secede because
a Presidential election was about to be legally gained
by one of the three opposing parties, after she had
freely and fully joined in the contest, was an indulgence
of caprice utterly incompatible with any form of government
whatever.

There is no need here to enter upon a discussion of
the many causes which, had given to the public opinion
of South Carolina so radical and determined a tone
in favor of disunion. Maintaining persistence,
and gradually gathering strength almost continuously
since the nullification furor of 1832, it had become
something more than a sentiment among its devotees:
it had grown into a species of cult or party religion,
for the existence of which no better reason can be
assigned than that it sprang from a blind hero-worship
locally accorded to John C. Calhoun, one of the prominent
figures of American political history. As representative
in Congress, Secretary of War under President Monroe,
Vice-President of the United States under President
John Quincy Adams, for many years United States Senator
from South Carolina, and the radical champion of States
Rights, Nullification, and Slavery, his brilliant
fame was the pride, but his false theories became
the ruin, of his State and section.

Governor Gist and his secession coadjutors had evidently
still a lingering hope that the election might by
some unforeseen contingency result in the choice of
Breckinridge. On no other hypothesis can we account
for the fact that on the 6th of November, when Northern
ballots were falling in such an ample shower for Lincoln,
the South Carolina Legislature, with due decorum and
statute regularity, appointed Presidential electors
for the State, and formally instructed them to vote
for Breckinridge and Lane. The dawn of November
7 dispelled these hopes. The “strong probability”
had become a stubborn fact.